


not a hero

by andnowforyaya



Category: B.A.P
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 21:14:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14197818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andnowforyaya/pseuds/andnowforyaya
Summary: Lately, super-powered humans have been popping up all over Seoul. Also, a stranger comes into Youngjae's workplace.





	not a hero

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jiunnie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jiunnie/gifts).



> thanks! hope you like it :)

Every hour or so, Youngjae is supposed to leave his station from behind the counter at the front door and roam the aisles to make sure no one has died in their seats from staring at the computer monitors for too long and surviving solely on instant noodles and energy drinks. It’s an opportunity for him to stretch his legs and, every once in a while, he’s even given the chance to use his brain for some tech-related problem-solving.

He roams the aisles slowly, sneakers scuffing against the floor, and peeks over the shoulders of customers to see what kinds of games they are playing. He sees on many screens the now-familiar landscapes of the new game TERRA, where a group of players are brought together to survive on an alien planet while fighting off the planet’s many dangers and original inhabitants. Youngjae finds a lot of issue with the whole premise, but chooses wisely to keep his views to himself while at work.

The nice thing about working here is that most of the time he can come in and plop down behind the counter, study for his university classes, and dabble in writing an article or story for the university paper, and the customers, despite their questionable hygiene habits, tend to be nice and reasonable. But the smell of the PC room -- greasy hair, armpits, and ramyun-flavored sweat -- is something that invades Youngjae’s dreams and nightmares.

“Hey,” he kicks the legs of the chair of one customer he finds slumped over in his little cubicle, a short stack of empty ramyun cups to one side of his computer screen. The customer startles, snorting at Youngjae’s kick, then straightening and blinking up at Youngjae with puffy eyes. “Even if you sleep, you pay,” Youngjae reminds the customer. He’s a familiar face, and doesn’t take issue with Youngjae’s bluntness, just nods and rolls his shoulders a bit before wheeling his chair closer to the edge of the table and clicking back into the game on his screen.

Rows and rows of booths for individual computers take up most of the room, and along the wall on one side is the door to the restrooms, and a couple of vending machines. Youngjae sighs, making his rounds and cleaning up here and there, taking the empty ramyun cups and cans he finds to the trash bins in the farthest corner of the room. He pauses on his third trip to the bin, catching a shape in the corner of his eye at the very end of the last row of computers.

No one that he knows of has booked a space in the last row.

Curious, Youngjae tosses the trash that’s in his hands into the bin and approaches, thinking it’s probably just a customer who got tired and relocated to take a nap in a quieter area of the PC room where the clicking of the mouses and clacking of the keyboards isn’t so pervasive. When he gets to the figure at the end of the row, though, he realizes this guy is not a customer.

No way. Youngjae would remember a face like that. The man -- who looks about the same age as Youngjae himself -- has soft-looking round cheeks, his left cheek smashed against his hand on the table. His eyes are closed and his lashes are long, fanning out over the tops of his cheeks, and Youngjae notices a beauty mark underneath one eye. His lips are plump and pink and slightly pursed, and his hair is a rich, chocolate brown, sweeping across his forehead.

Even though he’s sleeping, he’s striking.

Then Youngjae notices what he’s wearing. No shoes, for one thing. And his hoodie looks huge on him, and a bit ratty with holes, like maybe he’d found it on the street. His sweatpants fit him, at least.

How had he come into the PC room without Youngjae noticing? Or maybe he’s a leftover from Jaebum’s shift just before Youngjae? Maybe he’d snuck in and Jaebum had just left him alone for Youngjae to deal with. Typical.

Youngjae clears his throat, hoping the noise will be enough to wake up the stranger.

It’s not.

He sighs, moving a bit closer and reaching out a hand, but it hovers over the stranger’s shoulder, and he’s unable to bring himself to prod at him. He just looks so peaceful.

He brings his hand back, clears his throat again, and says, “Hello? Sir?”

The man’s eyebrows furrow, and he wrinkles his nose like a cat being disturbed during a nap.

“Excuse me? I don’t know if you’re supposed to be here?” Youngjae inches closer, not wanting to raise his voice and definitely not wanting to cause a scene. “Sir?” He reaches out and puts his hand on the man’s shoulder, shaking him lightly.

Then, quite suddenly, all the air has left Youngjae’s lungs and his feet are dangling about half a foot off the ground, and his shirt is very, very tight and the collar is kind of cutting off his airflow, and the stranger is standing in front of him, his eyes black and glistening like a demon’s. Youngjae’s hands go to his shirt, to the stranger’s hand fisted in his shirt, and he manages to choke out a gasp.

The other man blinks. The expression on his face morphs from murderous to surprised to apologetic. He opens his fist and Youngjae drops to his feet, catching himself with his hands on the edge of the table so he doesn’t go straight down to the floor. Youngjae coughs, air returning to his lungs, and the stranger shakes his head, taking a step back. His gaze darts around the room nervously, his hands coming up in front of himself. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and then he turns around and bolts.

Youngjae, winded and his legs feeling like jelly, can only watch as the stranger disappears out of the PC room doors.

“Did -- did anyone see that?” he asks the room.

There’s no response. He realizes nearly everyone had been wearing headphones, their eyes glued to the screens in front of them.

.

“And then -- get this -- he _lifts_ me up with _one hand_ and his eyes are totally black. Totally gone, right? Junhong, is it steroids? Is that a thing?” Youngjae speaks frantically into his phone, pacing the tiny space between his bed and his desk in his shoebox apartment, and waits for Junhong to respond. The light above his bed flickers as a subway train roars by outside.

He hears Junhong mouth-breathing into the phone. “Uh, hyung,” Junhong says slowly. “I mean, it’s probably not that weird. You’re not that big of a guy. If he’d lifted _me_ , now that would be something.”

“No, you don’t get it,” Youngjae argues, voice rising in volume. “He was my size! And he was totally -- like -- his eyes were just so creepy. And he ran off after, all scared, like -- I don’t know like what. Hold on, I have the security videos. I sent them to myself after my shift.”

“You’re being paranoid.”

“ _You’re_ being paranoid,” Youngjae snaps back automatically.

Junhong laughs and Youngjae’s cheeks burn. “Okay, okay,” his friend says. “Send me the videos. I’ll take a look and we’ll see if you’ve really found the next superman, or whatever.” 

“I’m not saying he’s like, a superhero, but. You never know.”

It’s true. You never did know. A lot of weird things have been happening around Seoul lately. There was a girl in the news recently, who could fly, but only a few short days after she was discovered, the police found her splattered into a billboard like a moth to a light. Then there was the boy who glowed so bright he had to be shipped off to some remote island somewhere so he wouldn’t blind the whole city.

Youngjae drags his laptop into bed with him, plopping down onto his squeaky mattress with his legs crossed and flipping open the screen. He opens his email to find the files he sent to himself, forwarding them to Junhong. “I’m sending them now. Let me know when you get them.”

Youngjae opens up the files himself. After the incident no one had noticed in the PC room, Youngjae had felt silly trying to figure out how to talk about it with the customers there. So he’d pulled up the security footage and watched it a few times himself, just to convince himself that it had really happened.

And yes, there’s Youngjae on the screen, slightly pixelated but identifiable, timidly going up to the stranger and tapping his shoulder. In a flash the stranger is out of his seat, the wheeled chair he was sleeping in rolling away quickly and hitting the opposite wall, and he’s got Youngjae in his grip, easily lifting Youngjae into the air with just one hand and no visible strain or tension in his body.

He plays it again, pausing and tilting his head to the side to examine the footage more closely. Did Youngjae really kick his feet in the air like that? He must have come off more panicked than he felt.

When the guy drops him, there’s a moment where Youngjae is hacking up his lungs and the stranger turns and accidentally looks into the camera in the ceiling. Youngjae can see the expression on his face: a combination of fear and regret.

“Woah…” Junhong’s voice is soft and tinny when he speaks. “You weren’t joking.”

“Yeah, one hand, Junhong,” Youngjae says. “I wasn’t exaggerating.”

“You failed to mention he was cute,” Junhong says.

Youngjae blushes, spluttering. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“That’s always relevant,” Junhong explains. “Anyway, I can run a program looking for his face. If he shows up on any other cameras in the city, we can know.”

“It’s creepy how you can do that.”

“Well, I am a genius, so.” He knows Junhong is shrugging as he makes that comment, and Youngjae grins.

“Don’t do anything weird, okay? I just want to know if he shows up around the city.”

“And then you want to track him down, and find him, and convince him you can be his superhero agent and manage all his appearances? I’m just extrapolating here.”

“Just keep me updated,” Youngjae says with an exasperated sigh, not quite knowing why he’s so interested and curious in the stranger. It’s just, the guy looked so sad. And the fear and regret in his eyes when he looked into the camera makes Youngjae think there’s a story to be uncovered.

.

Nothing out of the ordinary happens over the next few days. Another super-powered human is discovered but his power is something subtle relating to olfactory senses and memories, and he winds up scoring his own show on television as a combination chef/therapist after appearing on a few famous talk shows. Youngjae works, and studies, and goes to class, and tries not to fall asleep while he’s supposed to be managing the booths in the PC room. He watches the security footage a few more times before moving the files to another folder in his email. He hasn’t heard anything from Junhong, and he has other things he should be focusing on, like his midterms and papers that are coming up.

That day at work is particularly slow. Only a few customers filter in and out of the PC room, and miraculously, none of the computers act up and give Youngjae any problems that need to be fixed. Youngjae spends most of his shift studying and trying to write an outline for his Korean Literature and Poetry paper that’s due next week. Hoseok, an older man who used to be an IT technician at some big company but was laid off, arrives towards the end of Youngjae’s shift to take over, and Youngjae begins to pack up his things.

He hands over his keys to the PC room to Hoseok and tells him he’ll take the trash out on his way out, and Hoseok waves him off. Youngjae shoulders his bookbag and walks to the bins in the back, tying up two trash bags and dragging them down the stairs to the alley behind the building, where the dumpsters are.

Youngjae hates it back here. It’s dark, and always weirdly damp, and of course if smells like the backend of a horse. He does his best to hold his breath as he hoists the trash bags up and into the dumpster in the alley, brushing his hands together when he’s done with his deed and walking toward the mouth of the alley to the street. He brings his bookbag around to his belly and digs into the small front pocket, looking for his bottle of hand sanitizer, but before he’s able to find it, he’s being shoved against the wall, the rough bricks of the side of the building digging into his back and shoulders painfully. He lets out a gasp and puts his hands up as a reflex.

“Don’t mug me!” he shouts. “I don’t have anything valuable and no one will pay any ransom!”

“I’m not here to mug you,” his accoster says. Youngjae opens his eyes. He hadn’t realized he’d shut them to begin with. Great reflex, Youngjae, he thinks bitterly to himself. But then he realizes who is standing in front of him.

“Strong Man!” Youngjae’s been referring to the stranger as Strong Man in his own head for the past few days but now he realizes how silly it sounds.

The stranger blinks, confused, and then he shakes it off, narrowing his eyes and pressing Youngjae a little harder into the wall. “No, I’m here to tell you -- to call off your man!”

This time Youngjae blinks. “My man?”

“Whoever you have following me. Tell them to back off. Or else. Or else! I’m really strong, you know?”

“I don’t know what you’re -- oh my god, Junhong.” Youngjae wishes he could slap his own forehead but he’s afraid to make any sudden movements. Of course Junhong would find it amusing to tail this guy and _not_ tell Youngjae anything about it. “I’m so sorry. My friend is weird. We mean you no harm, I promise.”

The stranger doesn’t look convinced. “Then -- why did you shoot at me!”

“What? I don’t have a gun. Junhong doesn’t have a gun. At least, I don’t think he does,” Youngjae rambles. “He wouldn’t shoot at you. He couldn’t hurt a fly. He’s the sweetest kid even though he’s a little weird, but that’s not his fault because he grew up with people not really knowing what to do with him on account of him being so smart--”

Youngjae is shoved up against the wall again, this time scraping up a few inches so that his toes barely touch the ground. The stranger growls, his eyes darkening. Black creeps in from the edges, and Youngjae panics, heart leaping into his throat.

“You shot me,” the stranger grumbles. “My leg. It hurts.”

“I swear we didn’t. I swear we don’t want to hurt you,” Youngjae says quickly. “We want to help you! We want to help you. But we needed to find out who you were. That’s probably why Junhong followed you around a bit. He’s just curious. I’m sorry. About your leg. We should probably -- go to the hospital.”

“No hospitals!” The stranger shakes him against the wall and Youngjae’s head bounces off the brick painfully.

“Okay!” Youngjae yells. “No hospitals! I promise! Sorry. You’re really hurting me!”

For a moment, the stranger pauses, his eyes flickering, and Youngjae watches the black slowly recede from his eyes, until they return to normal. He lowers Youngjae slowly to the ground. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, “I got carried away.”

Youngjae comes back onto his own feet unsteadily, his heart still going at double speed in his chest and a lump forming on the back of his skull. “It’s okay. You seem -- stressed.”

“I thought you were trying to hurt me,” he says. “You and your long alien friend.”

Youngjae chokes on his own spit. “Junhong isn’t an alien.”

The other man furrows his eyebrows. “Oh,” he says with uncertainty. “I mean. I just thought. He was.”

“He’s a little weirdo, but he’s not an alien,” Youngjae explains, adjusting his bookbag to be behind him again. “But he’d probably be flattered you thought that about him. What’s your name?”

The stranger shifts on his feet, eyes darting to the mouth of the alley and back to Youngjae, his fingers coming up to pull at the collar of his hoodie -- the same hoodie he’d been wearing when Youngjae first met him. At least this time, he’s wearing shoes. Well, he’s wearing flat slide sandals. “It’s Daehyun,” he says finally, deciding to trust Youngjae.

“Well, Daehyun,” Youngjae says with a big, beaming smile, “I’m Youngjae, and how about we do something about your leg, hm?”

.

Only when Youngjae walks Daehyun up the shoddy stairs to his second floor walk-up apartment does he start to feel embarrassed about where he lives. Junhong has been over but Junhong is probably the least judgmental person Youngjae knows. His older friend Yongguk has been over, too, but he lives and breathes such a minimalist lifestyle that the last time he came over he actually praised how small Youngjae’s space was, and how few possessions he really owned.

It’s not like Youngjae is struggling or anything. He’s just a student, living from paycheck to paycheck, and most of his money goes to rent, food, and school. There’s little room for much else.

“It’s not much to look at,” Youngjae says when he opens the door, waving Daehyun inside. Daehyun limps in through the door with a grimace on his face and turns around in a full circle. Youngjae laughs, closing the door behind him. “Yeah, that’s everything.”

There’s Youngjae’s bed in the corner, his desk opposite, a tiny closet, a tiny bathroom, and a kitchen that’s really just a little stove, refrigerator, sink, and a sliver of countertop. The microwave is on top of his fridge and he has to use a little step ladder he keeps under the sink to reach it, most days.

“It’s nice,” Daehyun says, eyes wide and tone sincere. “You live here alone?”

“Uh, yeah,” Youngjae says, trying not to be bothered by the comment. It’s a normal thing to ask. It’s just that it reminds Youngjae how lonely some nights can be in his little matchbox space. “Take a seat on the bed? I have a first aid kit in the bathroom, and I can take a look at your leg.”

“It’s just a scratch,” Daehyun mumbles, stepping out of his sandals and limping over to the bed anyway.

“From a bullet,” Youngjae adds.

“It’s healing already,” Daehyun says. Youngjae hears him from the bathroom as he’s rummaging around in the cabinet for the first aid kit. He got it when he first moved in over a year ago and hasn’t touched it since. His mother had insisted.

“Well, we should at least disinfect it. Who knows what kind of diseases you can pick up around the city?” Youngjae emerges with the first aid kit and approaches Daehyun, who is perched on the very edge of the bed, looking like he is trying to take up as little space as possible. He has something in his hands. It’s the framed photo on Youngjae’s nightstand -- he and his older brother before his brother left for Japan, laughing about something Youngjae can’t remember, clinking beers. “That’s my older brother,” Youngjae explains, pulling his chair at his desk over so he can sit in front of Daehyun. “Do you...have family?”

Daehyun shrugs, putting the photo back on Youngjae’s nightstand. “I don’t remember. I think I had a brother.”

“You don’t remember?”

“I don’t remember a lot of things,” Daehyun says flatly. He pulls up the pants leg of his sweatpants and shows Youngjae the scrape on his calf. It’s still bleeding sluggishly, the wound almost the size of Youngjae’s longest finger.

Youngjae hisses, wincing in phantom pain. And his heart hurts thinking about what Daehyun just shared with him. “Took a chunk out of you.”

“But I got away.”

“Who is trying to hurt you?” Youngjae asks softly, finding Daehyun easy to talk to. The light above his bed flickers as a train roars by outside, and when Youngjae looks, he thinks he sees Daehyun’s eyes flickering, too, from black to normal to black to normal.

Daehyun shivers. “The people who made me like this.”

“Well,” Youngjae says, promises, “you don’t have to worry about them tonight.”

.

Youngjae makes them both a quick meal of stir-fried udon noodles as Daehyun uses his shower. He lays out another hoodie for Daehyun to wear, and a pair of joggers he thinks will fit him. After some consideration, he puts a pair of boxers in the pile, too. Then he leaves the clothes on the sink in the bathroom, the steam from Daehyun’s shower making it hard to make out anything in the bathroom. Not that Youngjae was looking.

Daehyun emerges with wet hair and golden, dewy-looking skin, wearing the clothes Youngjae laid out for him, and Youngjae is again struck by how striking the other man is. Not just striking. Other-worldly and beautiful.

“Is that food?” Daehyun asks at Youngjae’s staring. “Smells delicious.”

Youngjae clamps his mouth shut, turning back to the food on the stove. He turns off the burner. “I’m no chef but it’ll be edible.”

He divides the food onto two plates (he only has two plates in his apartment, he discovers), and gives one to Daehyun, who eats it at Youngjae’s desk while Youngjae leans against the stove. Daehyun inhales all of the food like a vacuum before Youngjae can take two bites. When Daehyun looks up at him, Youngjae hands him his plate, too. Daehyun takes it with a beaming smile, and Youngjae’s heart flutters quickly at that, making him gasp and blush.

“Thanks, it’s good!”

“You’re just hungry,” Youngjae says.

“Well, yes, but. It’s still good.”

Youngjae smiles gently at Daehyun’s honesty. “Thanks. I’m glad. How’s the leg?”

Daehyun hoists his foot up to the seat of the chair he’s in and pulls up the leg of the joggers, revealing a smooth pink scar where the wound had been just a little under an hour ago.

“Shit,” Youngjae blurts.

“See? All healed. And no weird diseases, thanks to you.”

“So you have super strength, and healing powers? What else can you do?”

Daehyun, still shoveling food into his mouth, narrows his eyes at Youngjae. “Don’t know. That’s all I’ve seen so far.”

“Amazing.” Youngjae pulls out his phone, writing notes to himself. Daehyun is an interesting subject and his mind is already racing to figure out how he can write up article about this experience. He’d keep it anonymous, of course, to keep Daehyun out of danger. “Do you ever, like, help people with your powers?”

Daehyun snorts. “Not intentionally. I’ve got my own shit to worry about, you know? Plus, you’re like, the only person who has ever helped me since I got out…”

“People are just -- complicated. You know, if people knew about you, they’d be so into it. You could really help people. Stop muggings. Robberies. That sort of thing.”

“Not interested. I didn't _ask_ for these powers.”

Youngjae frowns, typing into his phone.

“What are you doing?” Daehyun asks.

“Taking notes.”

“For what?”

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me. I’m trying to capture it.”

Daehyun pauses, and then he puts his plate down on the desk and moves to rise. “I see. I should go. Thanks for--”

“What?” Youngjae snaps his gaze up to Daehyun and puts his phone away. “What do you mean? No, stay. It’s fine. I’m not sending this to anyone or anything. I just -- nothing exciting ever happens to me so I wanted to write this down, to remember it.” His mouth works as he comes to terms with what he’s about to say. “I won’t -- do anything with it. I promise.”

Daehyun sits back down, staring at Youngjae, assessing him. Youngjae fidgets under his gaze, but holds firm. “You promise? Won’t send a tip to the news or cops?”

Youngjae nods. “I promise.”

Daehyun says, his lips quirking into an uncertain grin, “Then, won’t a picture last longer?”

.

Daehyun stays the night, and they share stories with each other until the sun is painting the sky indigo and pink, about to creep up over the horizon.

The stories Daehyun shares are fragments of memories, like glass shards that don’t quite make anything complete when combined, but beautiful and dangerous on their own. He can remember the hospital where he woke up, can remember the faces of a few of the staff he encountered, can remember the facility where he was taken and where they tested his new powers, can remember a few other children who were with him. He tells the story of how he escaped to Youngjae, who listens with rapt attention, imagining vividly the scenes Daehyun describes in his mind’s eye, and Youngjae realizes in Daehyun’s retelling of his stories how lonely Daehyun must be. This is probably the first time he’s been able to rest, have conversation, be treated like a friend, since he escaped.

The facility was somewhere around a lake, and the only reason Daehyun had been able to escape was because it had burned down. Youngjae can’t remember anything in the news recently about a facility burning down outside the city, but the way Daehyun is describing it, Youngjae wouldn’t be surprised if there is a cover-up involved. Maybe the government is even involved! The story makes him itch to write, to share, but he keeps his hands to himself and remembers his promise to Daehyun. Some things are more important than a breaking story.

Daehyun can’t remember anything before the hospital, except for a tiny glimmer of a memory where a boy shares a red toy car with him. He’s in school, maybe first grade, and it smells like dirt and grass and car exhaust.

Youngjae falls asleep in his desk chair to Daehyun’s stories just before dawn, dreaming of superheroes and of Daehyun saving him from falling off the top of the Empire State Building. He wakes up with a massive crick in his neck and with the sun already high up in the sky. He’d accidentally skipped a class but can’t find it in himself to care, because there’s a familiar stillness to his apartment that hadn’t been there a few hours ago.

Daehyun is gone.

He panics. What if the people looking for him found him? How could they have broken into Youngjae’s apartment without Youngjae noticing or waking up? Why hadn’t Daehyun made any sort of noise to alert him? He looks around his little apartment for any clues and eventually finds a note written on a yellow post-it on his pillow. It reads:

_Thank you for helping me. I won’t forget it. I think we’ll see each other again._

_-D_

_._

He still has it. The note, and the picture. He pulls it up on his phone every so often to look at it, to remind himself of that night. Daehyun is smiling and looking at Youngjae and not at the phone, and Youngjae is making a peace sign with his fingers, oblivious. He hasn’t shown anyone, not even Junhong.

He hopes he’ll see Daehyun again. But more than that, he hopes Daehyun is safe, and that he’s been able to stop running.

.

**Author's Note:**

> someone (me) has been watching jessica jones.
> 
> thanks for reading! comments and kudos appreciated <3
> 
>  
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/andnowforyaya) | [cc](https://curiouscat.me/andnowforyaya)


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